North East Now

In 2024, the North East entered a new era. Kim McGuinness was elected as Mayor of the brand new North East Combined Authority, ushering in a significant shift of power. Devolution puts the people of the North East closer to decision making, giving us greater control of our own destiny and more influence over how resources are deployed.

Inspired by this opportunity for renewal, New Writing North, in association with Redhills and UCL, commissioned 12 vibrant new essays from the North’s leading talent. These essays get under the skin of the issues facing the region, often providing unheard perspectives from those far away from centres of power. These are new narratives for the North East, encouraging us to consider what gives the region its character, what stories we want to tell about our region, and how we can influence a brighter future.

Discover the game-changing hope found in community; the attempts of students and carers to navigate systems of scant support in the face of depleted public services; the influence of our region’s industrial legacy on a green industrial future; our strength in diversity through the changing demographics of the North East; and more. These essays provoke and encourage ambitious and cooperative thinking at this moment of opportunity.

Richard Benson
Two and a Half Million Heroes

Richard Benson introduces North East Now by suggesting that devolution provides an opportunity to tell our own story independent of the southern gaze. From our role as the cradle of the Industrial Revolution, to its potential sequel – the Net Zero economy – he explores our determinedly independent spirit, our potential as a global region, and our creative problem solving and ingenuity. What other region could be represented by an iron angel with its feet on the ground?

Richard Benson is the bestselling author of The Valley and The Farm. He is currently a contributing editor at Esquire, and a contributor to Wired, the Guardian and The Sunday Times.

Read Two and a Half Million Heroes

Louise Powell
If Someone Falls, We’re There for Them: Stories from Sacriston

At the end of the nineteenth century, County Durham mining village Sacriston had a school, pubs, churches, chapels, library, literary society, Co-op, and a hall for 700 people. Today, forty years after the pit wheel stopped turning, this sense of community prevails. Yet funding is scarce and bureaucratic; paying to heat public spaces is often out of reach. Louise Powell asks: how can we invest in this committed community spirit so it can focus on the things that could make a real difference?

Dr Louise Powell is an award-winning working-class writer from Middlesbrough. She is the author of Coal Face and was published in Kit de Waal’s acclaimed Common People anthology.

Read If Someone Falls, We’re There for Them: Stories from Sacriston

Arlen Pettitt
In search of a new North East masculine identity

Arlen Pettitt confronts the changing face of male identity in the North East by sharing the stories of four very different men. Men need to be able to come together and feel part of something bigger than themselves: whether that’s singing with a room full of strangers in a male voice choir, or leaving behind a teenage life caught up in drugs and knife crime for a new job via the Princes Trust with the Newcastle United Foundation. How can we embrace variety in masculinity as we build our region’s future?

Arlen Pettitt is a non-fiction writer, policy consultant, and author of a weekly newsletter on regional politics called Wor Room.

Read In search of a new North East masculine identity

Holly Turner
At What Cost?: University Class Divide

Holly Turner was the first in her family to go to university. She thought by getting into a Russell Group university she had achieved her goal, but no-one prepared her for the significant class culture shock that awaited her. Her lack of a passport or driving license made getting a loan seem nearly impossible. Balancing part-time jobs left little time for studying. 43% of people in the North East feel where they live affects their likelihood of achieving their ambitions – how can we make the university experience easier for those without financial security?

Read At What Cost?: University Class Divide

Preti Taneja
The Women

Women entrepreneurs feel more supported in the North East than anywhere else, however ‘deaths by disadvantage’ amongst women are 1.7% higher than the UK as a whole. Preti Taneja explores the prevalence of domestic abuse in the North East by speaking to Laura Seebohm from WWIN and Sharon Brown from NDAS Northumberland, whose services see women across social strata and age groups. Entrepreneur, housewife, partner, mother – one woman can be all four. It can happen to all four.

Preti Taneja is the author of We That Are Young and the Gordon Burn Prize-winning Aftermath. She is Professor of World Literature and Creative Writing at Newcastle University and a Contributing Editor for And Other Stories.

Read The Women

Adelle Stripe
Rebel’s Last Field Day

Rebel Kicks is a homegrown rock star. He is a prize Hereford bull from one of the most successful herds in the country, Moralee, based in Mickley by the banks of the River Tyne. Although a relatively small-scale operation compared to commercial beef producers, it hasn’t prevented Moralee from embracing the international market and a global reputation. Adelle Stripe introduces us to the bull whose physical prowess and stature remains a powerful symbol of the North East’s resilience.

Adelle Stripe is the author of Black Teeth and a Brilliant Smile and Ten Thousand Apologies. Her nonfiction novels explore working-class culture, untold histories of Northern England, popular music, and small-town life.

Read Rebel’s Last Field Day

Christy Ducker
Caring in a teen mental health crisis

“This is the day our family becomes a statistic, in the fifth month of the third Covid lockdown.” Behind the pandemic newsfeed, a shadow spike is growing in North East England. By 2022, eating disorder referral rates for teens in the region will be almost double the rates pre-Covid. Christy Ducker and her family have to treat a lethal psychiatric illness at home, but of three things she is sure: how stubborn love is, how useless stigma, how crucial we care for the carers.

Christy Ducker is the author of four poetry books and pamphlets: Messenger, Heroes, Skipper and Armour. Her work has won a Northern Writers’ award, a Forward Prize commendation and a selection as PBS pamphlet choice.

Read Caring in a Teen Mental Health Crisis here.

Lucie Brownlee
Hearing Voices

Every day, voices are being amplified inside Larkspur Community Primary School. At this glowing jewel in the middle of a Gateshead estate where more than 40% of children live below the poverty line, children, parents and carers collaborate on glitter-filled craft projects about home and belonging; a neurodivergent student performs a cardboard box theatre puppet show during assembly; acceptance, joy and creative freedom fill the corridors. If these voices – so often undervalued and under-resourced – were heard and listened to beyond the school walls, what power could they wield?

Read Hearing Voices here